Instead of spending my time with people, I spent my days mining the university's extensive library for all things Shakespeare.
Largely this meant booking out the bulky BBC filmed Shakespeare series, which from 1978 to 1985 televised each and every Shakespeare play from 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona' to 'Henry VIII' in its unabridged glory. They were all available, most of them on VHS tapes stored in unappealing double-fold tan covers. I watched them all, one by one.
None of this was new. I’d cultivated my Shakespearean aloofness in high school. It started in my first year; we studied 'Romeo and Juliet'. I relished the fact that it made sense to me but seemingly to nobody else in the class. By the time we studied 'Macbeth' in Year 10, I spent most of my lunch hours nose-deep in interpretation.
Film was my other refuge but with the exception of Roman Polanski’s Macbeth and Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, these two loves rarely overlapped. There were plays of course but in suburban Perth in the early '90s, for the thongs and boards set, Shakespeare wasn't a going concern.
Kenneth Branagh was a flashpoint in all this. The opening of his sun-drenched Much Ado About Nothing that set my mind (and my loins aflame). I was instantly drawn to the roundedness of his vowels and the tightness of his, well, his tights. Mainly though, I was attracted to the vibrance of Branagh's translation.
And so I arrived here. Branagh’s adaption of Henry V is one of the most exceptional reproductions of Shakespeare on film. It is something even he hasn't managed to top. It is here that he found the perfect balance between the stage and the screen. He found the sweet spot between expression and diction. He completely owned the middle ground between experimentation and traditionalism, both thematic and visual.
And, in retrospect, he has given me the perfect vehicle through which to parallel my entry into impolite society.
Albeit in reverse.
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“Admit me Chorus to this history …”
Can we talk face to face? Let me address you prologue-like because I am going to ask for more than the usual indulgence here. Writing about film and writing about the personal is difficult, doubly so when the two feel so intertwined. It’s not something I want to overstate but I spent many years curled up inside this film and in Shakespeare more generally, so this could be a little messy.
I've been playing around with the structure of these pieces and I've finally settled on the autobiographical approach, even though some of the links back to my experiences are going to be tenuous, these ones included. So, alongside Derek Jacobi, I ask for your forbearance. There are going to be some long bows (and longbows) drawn here. I'm meddling with memory. I'm conflating the personal and the academic (historical, literary, theatrical and cinematic) and I don't have Holinshed to lean back on. It is not an easy thing to do, and I'll ask you in advance to forgive the times I pull up short.
Some of this commentary is reactionary, some considered, and some probably inflated for dramatic effect.
I'm never going to be as elegant as Shakespeare or Branagh in this. For a case in point you only need to watch Branagh's treatment of Henry V's prologue. It stands with Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet and his own Much Ado About Nothing as one of the most impressive Shakespearean film openings. It is a simple evocation of Shakespeare's intent updated from the Globe's "wooden 'O'" to the medium at hand.
Lone Derek Jacobi, a match, a knowing look, a floodlight and the enormity of the cinema sound stage:
You'd think the forgiveness conceit is no longer required; why excuse feeble representation when cinema allows us to not only recreate events with exactitude but to lift them with editing, with lighting and with music? Still, one doesn't want to drop one of the play's most recognisable speeches,
In laying bare his tools, Branagh works the scene to perfection. In fact, his use of the Chorus is worked to perfection throughout. Much of this is down to Jacobi's phenomenal performance. Though he is little more than a piece of the film's infrastructure, another piece of machinery like those he walks through here, he connects and he propels. His delivery here is so finely tuned. So impressively urgent. It races against Patrick Doyle's score, tumbling over itself to get started. It's a Shakespearean frenzy that provides the film's first emotional shiver. It raises the pulse. It gets me unconsciously leaning closer to the screen.
And then, when we're all lathered up, he flings open the doors and we're in.
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“The courses of his youth promised it not.…”
Branagh’s modulation of pace is exemplary. We move from Jacobi’s energetic rush from the sound stage to a darkened ante-chamber, where the Archbishop of Canterbury is locked in an under-breath conversation with one of his bishops regarding a threat to the church’s coffers. Their plan, much like today, is to push for war and its eventual spoils.
But I’m more interested in their sidenote – and I’ll add one of mine. When pressed on whether the king is feeling up for some complicitous warmongery, they agree he’s a lover of the church, and Shakespeare gives his first nod to the overarching narrative that had already been covered in ‘Richard II’ and the two parts of ‘Henry IV’.
For those just tuning in, Henry (a.k.a. Harry, a.k.a. Hal) had been an infamous roustabout. After his father's death, he had a miraculous lifestyle overhaul and took on the kingship with regal gusto. His turnaround is the stuff of historical and dramatic legend and it forms the crux of Shakespeare’s play. Here, the church considers the Hal we’ll only see in flashback:
Since his addiction was to courses vain,I, on the other hand, haven’t given you much of my backstory. I’ve served you a taster up above but I can’t point you in the direction of any prequels, so you'll have to indulge me below.
His companies unletter'd, rude and shallow,
His hours fill'd up with riots, banquets, sports,
And never noted in him any study...
Let me cast myself as the mirror image of Hal, not in a Harry Hotspur way, in a more bookish fashion. Riots, banquets and sports weren’t my scene. I never had the parties, or the women (I was "straight" back then), or the drugs. I never had the friends for any of that. Well, I never had the types of friends that did such things. We were more the videos, pizzas and video games sort. Any parties that my girlfriend frequented scared the shit out of me. Not because they were freaky, just that they were filled with people and I was too self-conscious to enjoy them. You could say I was a social recluse.
Hence the library. Hence the films. Hence the Shakespeare.
What I want to map out here is my own transformation, from hideaway to (relative) hellraiser: My reverse Hal.
But we'll concern ourselves with King Henry for the moment. We meet him post-transformation, in state. And he knows how to do state. So does Branagh. With very little he cuts an imposing figure, both in his performance and in his use of his sound stage. The huge doors open and the jolt of light empties onto the waiting lords. Henry walks in, in silhouette. He drapes himself across the throne and he calls for the Archbishop.
There remains an air of aloofness about him. Something dandyish. Until he opens his mouth. His demand is simple. He wants an explanation of the law the French are using to invalidate his claim to the French crown. He's looking for a justification for war. Or a way out of it.
This becomes one of the central contentions of the play, or at least Branagh's adaptation of it. Though not adverse to the declaration of war, Branagh's Henry doesn't here appear settled on it. Not like his uncle, Lord Exeter (though Brian Blessed always looks champing at the bit for a fight). Henry is considered. He presses for caution. From the outset Branagh distinguishes his Henry from the rampant nationalism of Laurence Olivier's. Where Olivier is flippant, seemingly over-eager, Branagh is almost resigned. Where Olivier seems to celebrate the upcoming slaughter, Branagh makes sharp note of the potential for devastation.
The Archbishop lays down his convoluted argument (a beautiful tract of Shakespearean legalese). He dismisses all legal impediments.
So, ultimately, the question for the King, and for Branagh, and for the audience is set out directly:
"May I with right and conscience make this claim?"To which the Archbishop replies:
"The sin upon my head, dread sovereign!"Relieved of legal block and moral culpability, the King's advisors make their final push. Exeter reminds the young King of the Lords' expectations and the two priests cynically ensure him that the war will be a money-spinner. And the resolve locks like a trap.
There is a sense that Henry has been rolled, that his youth has seen him bow to pressures against his better judgement. Some critics (probably those enamoured of Olivier's jingoism) complain of Branagh's "political correctness", though, for me, the colour this gives to his interpretation is what makes it far more fascinating. Just the delivery of the line "France being ours, we'll bend it to our awe, or break it all to pieces", the last part whispered introspectively, is enough to imbue Henry's character with unsettling moral complexity. And Branagh returns to the king's justification for warfare repeatedly.
Harry is still, even now, growing into his royal persona, but he has come a long way, as the French Dauphin's messenger, Montjoy, presently finds out.
We'll dwell on Montjoy a little. It is a part Branagh beefed up for his production (Shakespeare does not have Montjoy deliver the Dauphin's tennis balls for instance). The relationship between the herald and the king is actually one of the most interesting in the film and one that Branagh draws a lot out of. With Christopher Ravenscroft, who plays the role, Branagh constructs around the text a long-arc narrative, developed a little further with every brief encounter. It is Montjoy, more than any other Frenchman, who understands King Henry's mettle.
Here, at their first meeting, he gets an impassioned sting after acting as the Dauphin's sardonic mouthpiece. He delivers his message with the perfect balance of dignity and scorn. And in return he learns what everyone in England has learnt. King Henry is not Prince Hal. Those days have passed and they were purposeful.
As the king himself calls out:
And we understand him well,For Branagh, much of Henry V is given over to exploring what that use actually was. Here he merely smacks down how effective it has been. In response to Dauphin's off-handed dismissal, the king is ferocious. I don't want to quote endless verses at you but I love this burn and Branagh's steely-eyed delivery of it is absolutely superb:
How he comes o'er us with our wilder days,
Not measuring what use we made of them.
And tell the pleasant prince this mock of hisYou can actually see Montjoy shitting himself.
Hath turn'd his balls to gun-stones; and his soul
Shall stand sore charged for the wasteful vengeance
That shall fly with them: for many a thousand widows
Shall this his mock mock out of their dear husbands;
Mock mothers from their sons, mock castles down;
And some are yet ungotten and unborn
That shall have cause to curse the Dauphin's scorn.
So get you hence in peace; and tell the Dauphin
His jest will savour but of shallow wit,
When thousands weep more than did laugh at it.
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“Now all the youth of England are on fire…”
18 year old me would have loved a war. At least, that is what 18 year old me would have told himself. Not a modern war, mind you, a medieval battle. Armour and horses, swords and shields. That is what I'd spent my years fantasising over. In reality I would have hated it; I’ve never been a violent person. But it was a super effective way to disassociate myself from the world around me. The Perth suburbs. The people that didn't understand me.
Unconsciously I settled on the fact that I didn't belong in Australia. England was my spiritual home, with the castles and the good manners and the cups of tea. I was sure I'd be understood there. 18 year old me was pretty fucked in the head really.
I got it knocked out of me quick smart.
I became Australian the second I set foot in the UK. As soon as I landed there I realised that I had far more in common with my neighbours back home than I did with any of the Brits. I thought cheery dispositions were the norm and that people were generally open to talking to strangers in the street. Never having left the country I didn't realise that those traits and a lot of others are peculiar to Australians.
I'm exaggerating slightly, of course, but back then the difference really did feel exaggerated. It was world-shattering. I suddenly felt a rush of connection to a place and a people I'd spent a lifetime recusing myself from. And England, the land that I had looked to for culture and society, for Shakespeare, castles and stately homes, was an industrial shell. All the romance was gone.
I was set adrift.
I can see Branagh's representations of the English populous from both sides of this divide. His Bardolph, Pistol, Nim and Nell sit astride it, reality on the one hand, romanticism on the other.
For Branagh, the shift isn't tied to the insufferable whims of an ex-patriot teenager (I think I was actually 20 by the time I got over there), it is a necessary differentiation for the development of Henry's character. His reformation, which progresses over the course of three plays, is the reformation of a king and a kingdom (though not that Reformation). Branagh is faced with the need to invoke this arc for an audience that isn't familiar with the material. Unlike Shakespeare, who could rely on his audience to be following along with his plays, Branagh needed to get everyone up to speed without slowing down his film.
To do so, he mines the 'Henry IV' plays for grabs of Henry's life hanging with the recalcitrant, loose-living Sir Jack Falstaff and splices them into his film as flashbacks. Admittedly, it is a crash course in Hal's waywardness and betrayal, but there is enough crammed in to ensure the emotional impact is readied. Importantly, too, it gives Branagh the chance to show a happier time for the crew at the Boar's Head. Firelight, smiles, Falstaff's jokes.
So we see Hal, we see Falstaff (a robust Robbie Coltrane), we see a repurposed jest in which Hal foreshadows his post-coronation disavowal.
The scene comes and go in a flash. Coltrane makes the most of the spurt, imbuing his with comedic energy, but Branagh’s focus is primarily on the emotional fallout. The scene, though far more sparky than its introduction in the tavern, ends with a chilling pang. Hal’s icy look, Falstaff’s horrifying realisation and the steely voice over, “I know thee not, old man.”
And with that, we return to the Boar’s Head's dour inhabitants. Even here, Branagh seeps the set in a melancholy not generally used for these clownish players.
Historically, things were probably a little more peppy. The French campaign was crowdsourced. Everyone was asked to throw in a penny or two. Towns were sized up and the citizens loaned the crown what they could. Royal treasures were passed out as surety. Basically, everyone had a stake in the war effort. But, while such a concept may fly under Olivier, Branagh’s Henry V is a more conflict-aware film (I’m not going to use the word “anti-war” because I think there is more going on here). But there is certainly a distinction between what the Chorus is putting about (the “youth on fire”) and this collection of burnt out souls.
These are Branagh’s realist Brits: poor, downtrodden and dispirited. They are loyal to Harry but wounded. Falstaff is the primary victim. As Judi Dench’s Nell says, “The king has killed his heart.”
Dench’s recounting of the death of Falstaff is the work of a consummate theatre actress. Branagh makes the most of it with a single shot, with the four old friends (and Christian Bale) sitting dumbstruck on the stairwell. He slowly zooms into Nell’s face as she describes the cold remnants of the once boisterous body. Her voice cracks. She almost breaks. Then, in morbid celebration, she rallies into a sad humour. As the memories start to flow, the sanitising of Falstaff begins.
It is a beautifully directed scene that should ring true for anyone who has sat around reminiscing after the loss of a loved one.
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“A nest of hollow bosoms…”
Henry’s court life is also coming under fire. Jacobi’s Chorus sets the scene with expositional efficiency. (On a side note, I love this form of exposition. I want all my exposition to be delivered to me by enthusiastic Derek Jacobi in a black coat.)
- “Three corrupted men,
One, Richard Earl of Cambridge, and the second,
Henry Lord Scroop of Masham, and the third,
Sir Thomas Grey, knight, of Northumberland,
Have, for the gilt of France,--O guilt indeed!
Confirm'd conspiracy with fearful France;
And by their hands this grace of kings must die.”
What follows is a superbly contained miniature consiracy drama. It is tight. It is action packed. It comes with lashings of homoerotica.
Well, it did for me. But I was starved for anything I could get my hands on. And like one of the interviewees in The Celluloid Closet (I think it was Susie Bright) points out, we queers scratch together positive images wherever we can.
I don’t bring this up (only) to alert you to some royally hot spurned-lover angst, I need to introduce the whole gay thing in here because it had a real impact on my development. Being in the closet isn’t at all fun and it affects us in ways that we don’t really understand, having grow up within, with no view to the queer horizon.
We’ll return to this presently; identity politics is not the issue at hand for Harry. Gay wasn’t a thing back then. Still, there were queer bedfellows, as Exeter points out, and Harry does get right up in Scroop’s business.
And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot,It’s a surprisingly emotional scene. Again, Patrick Doyle’s score aids immeasurably. And a closing slap from Brian Blessed seals the deal. With that, and another rhyming couplet, the army sets sail.
To mark the full-fraught man and best indued
With some suspicion. I will weep for thee;
For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like
Another fall of man.
Cheerly to sea; the signs of war advance:
No king of England, if not king of France.
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“Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'”
My social rehabilitation didn't occur in France and certainly not on the battlefield. It happened in the Australian outback. It happened post-coming out. And it happened amongst some terrifyingly straight men. Actually, I suppose it was a battlefield of sorts. Me against the Australian male.
But this is better described in the midst of battle and we have to get there first.
Thankfully, there's some Brian Blessed diplomacy to help us along.
Shakespeare likes a compare and contrast. Act II, scene IV throws up one of his best and Branagh plays it for all its worth. The French, headed by the slowly-scuttling King Charles VI (Paul Scofield), are considering their options in the face of the arrival of the English forces. Unlike Harry's chamber, Charles' is in disarray. Nobody can settle on a response. The Dauphin, unsurprisingly, underestimating King Henry's resolve, is for rash attack. Michael Maloney delivers this assertion with fiery petulance. The king's other counsellors, off the back of Montjoy's estimation, suggest caution.
Enter Brian Blessed's Exeter.
If the Dauphin's missive was a confirmation, Exeter's is a goading slap in the face. Let's be frank, Brian Blessed gives good slap. Listen to his voice. His resonant modulation. Look at his don't-you-even-dare eyes. The man is a Shakespearean beast.
And see how Maloney's face drops when Exeter gives the Dauphin his own personalised dressing down. Priceless.
King Charles still vacillates, but even as he is giving Exeter his response ("Tomorrow you will know our mind in full"), Patrick Doyle's score is giving us the ultimate answer.
And Derek Jacobi delivers the spitting catch-up amongst the explosions of Harry's siege of Harfleur. It is another remarkable, adrenaline-lifting shift in pace.
It is here, in the commotion of battle that Harry delivers his famed call to arms. (To be most precise, I'd label it his most famous and second best call to arms.) And it is here that the anti-war thing gets a little slippery. Once committed, Henry doesn't mince words. He rallies his troops, he brings the battle to the brink and then he delivers a savage call for capitulation.
Therefore, you men of Harfleur,I'm of the school that believes Henry is all talk here, whipped up with battle-fire and desperate for an outcome. I don't think Branagh puts it out there that he would ever follow through (Henry's order to Exeter, quietly expressed, to "use mercy to them all" is clear evidence of this) but the French have to believe he would and Branagh certainly makes it convincing in delivery.
Take pity of your town and of your people,
Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command;
Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace
O'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds
Of heady murder, spoil and villany.
If not, why, in a moment look to see
The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters;
Your fathers taken by the silver beards,
And their most reverend heads dash'd to the walls,
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,
Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused
Do break the clouds -
What say you? Will you yield, and this avoid,
Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy'd?
My battle was never as dramatic. My battlefield was never as populated. When I left home, I left to live in a remote Aboriginal community in the West Australian desert. I went from the metropolis of Perth to the isolation of the Pilbara. Despite this isolation, I was suddenly living cheek-by-jowl with people I couldn’t hide from.
All of them men. More specifically, all of them Aussie blokes. Beer drinking, porn watching, foul-mouthed, tank top wearing blokes.
And I was petrified.
I needn’t have been. They were ace. But for me, a kid who had never touched a beer and who barely spoke, let alone swore, I felt more out of place than I had been. My battle was to fit in or to break apart.
My coming out helped. Not that I came out to any of the guys while they were working with me. Personally though it freed me up. It allowed me to stop worrying about being found out. I could stop finding ways to slip into the background. I could become myelf.
And I did it with a bottle of Brown Brothers tarrango. It was my first ever night of drinking to excess. I don’t know who brought the Brown Brothers tarrango. I know they didn’t like the Brown Brothers tarrango I know I couldn’t tell the difference. And I know I spent the early evening redecorating a stranger’s bathroom while his son looked on asking questions. It wasn’t my finest moment.
Getting blind drunk for the first time so late in life does has its advantages though. I could approach it with analytical fervour. I could untangle the effects step by step. I could marvel at the way my eyes didn’t follow quite as fast as they should when I turned my head. I could marvel at the slow disintegration of my fine motor skills. Most importantly, I could assure myself that my secrets, so long locked away, weren’t going to tumble out unannounced.
And so I was introduced to the wonderful world of binge drinking. Then popular music (nobody talks to you when you listen to Enya). Then fashion (nobody sees you when you wear clothes from Target). And ultimately men… but that’s a whole other post.
Look, it wasn’t Bardolph level debauchery, but it was my personal transformation.
Before the surrender of Hafleur, the Harry’s forces have turmoil of their own. Shakespeare introduces us to Captain Fluellen, who sets himself in debate other three captains about the manner in which the war is being conducted. The captains are carefully selected, there is Macmorris, an Irishman with whom Fluellen, a Welshman, has his main beef; Jamy, a Scotsman and Gower, an Englishman.
So, England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales tussle in the trenches. It is another group of characters who usually offer up broader comedy. Branagh opts to focus on the grit instead and in doing so perhaps obscures their purpose; their disunity serves proof that Henry has a way to go before he can secure a stable army, and by extension a stable nation.
Branah may cut a good deal of Fluellen out of his film but Ian Holm, who takes on the role with pedantic gusto, remains a major player. He may not go head to head with Pistol and his leek but he still shares a moving consolation with the king later in the piece, once all the players have fallen in behind him. And, even though Holm still plays him with a clownish edge, I like that Branagh still puts stock in his military prowess and encyclopaedic knowledge of “the disciplines of the war”.
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“De nails, madame…”
War can be an oppressive theme. Having co-opted the usual clowns, Branagh’s not left with much levity. So, praise be Emma Thompson for letting some air into this stifling environment.
I love this scene. Thompson and Geraldine McEwan nail it (quite literally) with their comic English lesson. In the scheme of things it is little more than a woozy introduction to Princess Katharine, who won’t come into play again until the final act, but what an introduction. I guess the scene does also connect to the play’s themes of court, communication and miscommunication, which Shakespeare returns to throughout, but it does still feel out of place.
I took French in Year 8. Unfortunately I gave it away after one semester. In one of the stupidest decisions of my life, I decided that touch typing and technical drawing would be more practical skills. I was so bored in typing class that I once sat for a whole hour with my finger on the M key. I did much better in technical drawing. I almost topped the class, for what it’s worth (not much since I’ve never had to draw a cross section of a steel bracket since). I took French up again in first year university. One of the only courses I ever failed. Still, I could order McDonald’s in Paris so it was worth it.
My point (and it is about as useful as Shakespeare’s) is I know enough French to get by here and I delight in this scene. The words often pop into my head randomly and I’ll often randomly repeat them to bewildered friends.
They give me the same look Paul Scofield gives Thompson. Buzzkill.
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“Fortune is Bardolph's foe…”
Henry level social transformations don't come without casualties. Mine ended up being my high school friends, scant as they were. There were four of us. We were a tight bunch of lockaways. We were library-dwellers. Or computer room frequenters. Outside of school, it was video sleepovers, Amiga 500 games and Monty Python recitations. Through uni we began to grow apart as each of us slowly entered into a less sheltered world (some of them got out before I did) but we still kept in touch.
The desert broke things apart though. It changed my priorities. My eyes were opened on a wider world. It wasn't just the gay thing, or the drinking, or the gigs. Living in an Aboriginal community, I was awoken to injustice in a way that textbooks in predominantly white universities in Perth couldn't appreciate. I began to question people. I began to question why we did things. And I couldn't understand why the people I met, some of them my old friends, couldn't comprehend the enormity of what I now saw. We suddenly had less in common.
I remember distinctly meeting a uni classmate on the street corner one day when I was visiting my parents over the school holidays. I was walking back from the local supermarket (which seemed smaller and whiter) and walking down the (wider, whiter) street, when I saw him. We chatted. He was excited, He'd just bought a house around the corner with his girlfriend. He'd got a job at a school in the next suburb over. He was in heaven. I could not comprehend his self-delusory bliss. We never saw each other again.
Henry's disassociation was far more dramatic; though, we don't get to see much of it here. It was all closed off in "Henry IV Part II". Here, Shakespeare only describes the aftershocks, and generally offstage. Branagh though is an oversharer. It is one of the things I like least about his Shakespeare adaptations, his distrust of Shakespeare's words to evoke images in their own right (I think his most egregious overshare is in his Hamlet, where he pulls in Charlton Heston and Judi Dench to put faces on Priam and Hecuba). Here though, with the hanging of Bardolph, Branagh does more than just show us one of Shakespeare's discarded moments, he deepens the thematic undercurrents of his adaptation by bringing Harry face to face with the effects of his disassociation.
It is a powerful scene in which Branagh makes capitalises on the close-ups he doesn't have access to on stage. Again, he underscores the moment with a flashback from the previous play, but here the drama is in the grief stricken, rule of law upholding nod that sends his former companion to his death.
The speech with which Henry legitimises his decision is a resonant statement on warfare, ancient and modern. It speaks not just to his newfound kingliness but to his foresight as a soon to be ruler of a new nation.
We would have all such offenders so cut off: and weThat last line is especially pertinent in today's world, where our ever-snowballing state of war seems to continuously tumble on, each new conflict being born out of the atrocities of the last.
give express charge, that in our marches through the
country, there be nothing compelled from the
villages, nothing taken but paid for, none of the
French upbraided or abused in disdainful language;
for when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the
gentler gamester is the soonest winner.
It is fitting that Henry's compulsion for leniency heralds the arrival of the only Frenchman who appears to show him any sort of deference, the herald Montjoy.
It gives the two of them a little more time to continue their covert bromance.
This, in actual fact, is the only interaction Shakespeare's original text give Harry and Montjoy. The rest Branagh has scraped together from other throwaway characters. The effect is impressive. It gives Branagh the chance to slowly reveal the progression of King Henry in an international forum. In Charles' court, it is Montjoy who continually backs Henry in the face of the French shadenfreaude.
Henry gives him his due here. The mutual respect is palpable. So is the feeling of inevitable defeat. You can see they want to hug it out.
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“Indeed, my lord, it is a most absolute and excellent horse…”
Henry and Montjoy do manliness right, which is to say, respectfully. The Dauphin and his fractious cohort do not.
I was never exposed to men in packs until the desert. Owing to an incident in the school prior to me starting, up there there were only men. Well, only men and the boss' wife, who was an honorable man, and certainly more manly (if we're going to wallow in gender binaries) than shy little 20 year old me was.
And, the conversations were astounding. I had no idea such things were talked about, blown out of proportion and, well, measured (figuratively). It was, to say the least, eye-opening.
Shakespeare doesn't have the French pull their cocks out (more's the pity) but he does capture something of the ridiculous one-upmanship that goes on when men congregate. He uses the scene to multiple ends; to reiterate the French forces' disunity, to provide a survey of their superior position; to humourously reinforce the Dauphin's misguided pomposity and to throw up a direct point of comparison to the first scene of Act IV, which follows.
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“ A little touch of Harry in the night…”
On the other side of the battlefield, Shakespeare has his "valiant creatures" at rest, musing on their impending ends. The English forces are taking stock and Henry walks throughout his host to connect with his soldiers.
As the Chorus describes it:
A largess universal like the sunIt is a quiet scene. Harry, draped in the cloak of Sir Thomas Erpingham, takes himself back down to the rank and file. It is a levelling scene, which makes much of the king's ability to understand the common man (one of the aforementioned uses he made of his wilder days). Indeed, it ends with Henry, alone and crammed with considerations, musing on the trappings of royalty and how he is just a man like any other. It is a scene that plays with the concept of identity, one in which Shakespeare repeatedly quips on the king's normality. As Erpingham says as he gives over he cloak, "this lodging likes me better/Since I may say 'Now lie I like a king.'"
His liberal eye doth give to every one,
Thawing cold fear, that mean and gentle all,
Behold, as may unworthiness define,
A little touch of Harry in the night.
It is in many respects the crux of the play.
And in many respects, it is the crux of my story, too, the ability to fit in. But it didn't come about the way one would expect. I didn't take on the mantle of "bloke". I became louder, probably more obnoxious, certainly less worried about he opinions of others. More intimidating I was once told. But I remained myself.
Or, rather, I became myself.
I learnt that that was okay. Not because people would accept me for who I was but because people are really only concerned with themselves and with how others see them. I learnt they would rarely scratch below the surface, not if I didn't want them to.
This was the single most important discovery in my personal development, and it came off the back of a conversation I had with my housemate the day before we flew back to Perth for the school holidays. To me, he was like a Renaissance man: intelligent, sporty, artistic, good natured - he was a paragon of Aussie masculinity. And we spoke about the woman he was interested in and how didn't know how to make his feelings known to her. He said to me, "I'm not like you, I'm not confident, I'm a mess of insecurities."
I was gobsmacked. This man who I thought had it all was just like me on the inside, breaking apart with self-doubt. To him, my reclusive demeanour was the the epitome of a man who had come to know himself: stoic, self-assured, intelligent.
And I thought, if I can "seem" like this, if this is what people see, then this is what I can be. And I thought, I can wear these masks and people will be none the wiser.
And in wearing masks, I found I began choosing those that most suited me. And behind those masks the insecurities began to dissipate.
And I was left.
Nobody sees the king here. Harry wears his mask well. He lived in it throughout his whole youth. It has given him the insight into his people. Now it allows him the opportunity to question them on their views of him and his campaign. He says a goodbye (of sorts) to his old companion, Pistol, who despite all that has passed still loves Harry dearly. And he joins the fireside discussion of three soldier, John Bates, Alexander Court, and Michael Williams.
The topic at hand is the righteousness of the king's cause and to what extent those who follow him are blameless in their following:
- "If his cause be wrong, our obedience to the king wipesIronically, Henry was the one pushing for absolution before he declared his war on France. Yet here he argues the point. The king (he) is not any more responsible for his subjects' actions than a father is for his sons or a master his servants.
the crime of it out of us."
- "But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath
a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and
arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join
together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at
such a place;' some swearing, some crying for a
surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind
them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their
children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die
well that die in a battle; for how can they
charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their
argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it
will be a black matter for the king that led them to
it."
Every subject's duty is the king's; but every subject's soul is his own.It is a straw man argument, but argued forcibly. And he gains concession from Williams.
But, when all is said and done, Henry is not as at ease as he appears. His rebuke, though forcefully stated, doesn't sit so well with him. In Branagh's mouth it is as if Henry is processing his own thoughts, trying to reconcile his position as king. And as soon as he is alone, he dredges it up again:
Upon the king! let us our lives, our souls,This sets him in a reverie that goes to the heart of the Henry's kingliness: his recognition of his own kingly burden. Although he successfully argued his way out of it, he knows his actions shake kingdoms and how enormous the consequences of these actions are. He knows he sends souls to heaven. He feels every one.
Our debts, our careful wives,
Our children and our sins lay on the king!
Branagh wears this on his face. This is one of his finest deliveries. It is completely intimate and completely believable. There is a resigned wistfulness to Harry's imagining of a life without the ceremony of royalty, which he sees as the one key difference between his life and the next. It is a fallacy, of course, but one that Branagh sells and one that must have been immense for Shakespeare to mouth in the face of kingly divinity.
But there is poetry in the imagining of it. That a king would want to be like the general populace. That he or she may actually be no greater, except for the trappings. And in expressing the king's acceptance of his state and his willing shouldering of his subjects' souls, Shakespeare presents us with a magnanimous and wholly rounded head of state. Even if he doesn't feel it on the inside. Even if he is riddled with insecurities.
Because it seems even a king can wear a mask.
Still, by this point Henry has grown into his. Here he takes on his title, albeit begrudgingly, and his command is consummate. His self-belief, his contrition for his father's usurping, his ability to engage his subjects at the most primal level, all combine to secure him heroic victory.
------
“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers…”
I'm going to leave off talking about myself now. On that front I've brought you to a place where you can rest assured I've reconciled to myself. I’m solid. I gave away my reclusive ways (even if they do pop up again every now and then). I've found a brace of fond friends. I let loose regularly. I won’t lay out a catalogue of my crimes but I’ve notched up a few. And they’ve all been worth it.
But I will leave you with this little anecdote from back before the turmoil began in earnest. It was my first few weeks of high school. I was 12. I was suddenly in a bigger world. I was still open to trying new things.
And, for some reason completely forgotten to me only a couple of months afterwards, I nominated myself for Year 8 representative. It meant getting up and making a speech in front of the entire year group, which would have been upwards of 300 students. So I stood up, skinny-legged, in shorts (because I never wore anything but shorts throughout me entire high school years), cleared my throat and lay out my plan for the students.
I have no idea what I said. Apparently, I was hilarious. I was elected. I got a badge.
More importantly I was handed a mask. Pity is I had no idea how to use it. If elections are popularity contests, I won big. But I squandered my winnings. I didn't play to the strengths I clearly had because I didn't recognise I had them.
What's more, I was a terrible school councillor. Not having been a part of anything like that in the past I didn't realise there were responsibilities that went along with the badge. I didn't know there were weekly meetings I was supposed to show up to, so I didn't. It wasn't until the end of semester celebration that I was asked if I was coming to the lunch. So, I did. Let's just say the head teacher wasn't impressed. I tried to explain but he saw adolescent haughtiness instead of naivety. I was kicked out.
And from then on I receded into the background.
If there is one moment that I look back on in my life and think I could have used my own hard-earned advice, it would be that one. So, yeah, I could have been a (high school) contender.
Such is power of speeches.
If the previous scene is the crux of the film, Harry's St Crispin's speech is its soaring height. It is here that the king secures the total allegiance of his countrymen even in the face of certain death. It is here that the four nations have become one (Branagh makes sure to set Fluellen, Macmorris, Jamy and Gower together in a single shot). And here, through their union they become the machine that is about to railroad the French.
Henry oils the machine with well-positioned words, with humour, with flattery, with perfectly couched reverse psychology.
The end result is an army so buoyant they are falling over themselves to get to the battlefield.
Watching Branagh in action, floating on Doyle's army of violinists, it is impossible not to get caught up in the fervour. Even reading Shakespeare's speech while imagining this scene is enough to set my heart racing. (And all this despite the fact that it sounds like he's musing on a children's breakfast cereal.)
And so, just when they have set their teeth for battle, Montjoy returns offering one final parley. Again he finds the English in a state of complete and unwavering determination. His offer becomes yet another opportunity to galvanise the hearts of his men.
Understanding completely, Montjoy, doffs his feather plumed cap and bids farewell:
"Thou never shalt hear herald any more."
------
“I know not if the day be ours or no…”
From hereon in I'll give this over to Branagh because this passage of film, its construction and its performance is the section that he takes almost entirely on his own shoulders. Once the arrows start to fly, Branagh leaves Shakespeare's text to one side and focuses on a purely visual narrative.
Branagh holds the line on the characters' storylines, ensuring this is no faceless melee. Indeed, faces and characters give the battle structure befitting Shakespeare's groundwork. The experiential aspects of the conflict, the confusion and the terrifying apprehension play out on the reactions the soldiers on Harry's front line.
And then it is all crush and mud and blades.
Branagh stays with those characters we know. With the newly introduced Williams, with Corporal Nim thieving from the fallen before he falls himself, with the French Constable when he's dragged from his horse, with Fluellen as he despatches multiple French soldiers and with Suffolk as he is set upon but a crowd of assailants, with Pistol as he discovers his friend's lifeless body, and ultimately with Harry as he combat's the Dauphin.
As the battle progresses and Branagh slows the speed down, focus begins to shift from narrative to horror. The mud. The horses trampling men into the ground. The men pushing other men's faces into bloodied pools. The endless clanging of swords. The utter exhaustion.
The battle scene is epic and certainly an improvement on anything Shakespeare would have be replicating in the theatre. Branagh gets part way there but no film production is ever going to go full scale. It is true that Henry's army was outmanned five to one as Exeter says but it is important to note that he is referring to "fighting" men. As a whole, the English forces were about 9,000 as compared to 12,000, it was just that 7,000 of those were archers.
Large in number and protected behind sharpened stakes to thwart damaging cavalry charges (a tactic Henry picked up from a French commander apparently), the English archers famously destroyed the French army. What Branagh doesn't hammer home (and it probably a budgeting thing) is just how many bodies would have been strewn across the field, and how many would have been crushed as they pushed forward with nowhere else to go. Piled upon each other and pincered from behind, many of the French soldiers would have suffocated.
Basically, it was absolute carnage.
As the scene is wallowing at its muddiest, the boy (young Christian Bale finally gets something to do), is seen running through the lines with a banner in hand. He runs behind the English lines and is followed by a number of French horsemen. Screams ring out and the English pull back.
Suddenly we are thrust back into Shakespeare's text as Fluellen, then Harry, discover the that the French have murdered the defenceless luggage boys. Henry fires up just as Montjoy returns to admit the French defeat. In violent bewilderment, Harry receives the news that the English have won the day.
Branagh looks wrecked here; Montjoy, emotionally hollowed out. There is such enormous release in Harry's face when he realises what has come to pass. And when Fluellen sidles up and starts pressing his king's nationalist buttons ("I do believe your majesty takes no scorn to wear the leek upon Saint David's day"), Henry's near collapse is layered with conflicting feelings. It is an exceptional display of Branagh's acuity and control in front and behind the camera.
When Montjoy returns with the lists of the dead, the enormity of Henry's victory is revealed. 10,000 French deaths, including 126 princes and nobles and 8,400 knights and other gentlemen. When racked up against the English dead
Edward the Duke of York, the Earl of Suffolk,it all seems a bit unbelievable and it is no wonder that Henry gives over to saying, "God fought for us."
Sir Richard Ketly, Davy Gam, esquire:
None else of name; and of all other men
But five and twenty.
The "royal fellowship" of French deaths though, something that caused no end of political strife in France in the years that followed seeing as the deaths crippled the Dauphin's support base, was not a god given miracle. In response to the killing of the English boys, Henry called for all the French prisoners who had surrendered to the English to be put to death ("We'll cut the throats of those we have, and not a man of them that we shall take shall taste our mercy").
It is a line generally cut from productions, even this one which appears to focus on the less savoury aspects of war. So many, if not most, of those princes killed were in fact POWs and their killing would no doubt have not sat well with Fluellen and his 'disciplines of the war'. In fact, it is a contention that has even been raised in a dramatic high court (The Supreme Court of the Amalgamated Kingdom of England and France - featuring Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg) and the bench ruled against Henry and the English in this matter.
------
“Let there be sung 'Non nobis' and 'Te Deum'…”
I know I have made note of Patrick Doyle’s endlessly effective score thorughout this piece but I’ve never fully given him his well-deserved due. I thought it best to hold off until the money shot. This scene, where Doyle himself appears to sing the first verses of his award winning theme.
To be honest, it is only on rewatching Henry V that I remembered that his four minute scene is a single take. In any other film this would be memorable for me. Here, it is an achievement that plays second fiddle to the soundtrack. Some critics voiced their consternation at this, citing its emotional sledgehammering, but to my mind, given what has come before, the Doyle’s choral work is the perfect accompaniment.
Throughout the film Doyle has been keeping pace. His themes direct the action without overtly signposting it. He leads the charge at almost every juncture. Branagh uses him to quell the pulse, and to quicken it. It is a very present score. It is a score that adds grandeur in places where the film's bare sets could have looked underwhelming. Suffice to say, Doyle's role in the success of Henry V is more than central.
Patrick Doyle, take a bow:
And so, Branagh's crowns his battle-weary film with a visual and aural requiem. He underscores Doyle's soaring hymn with a crushing survey of the devastation that has been wreaked in his name.
Branagh's camera tracks with him over the geography of the battlefield, from the carnage of the luggage, where Harry picks up the boy, through the sharpened stakes that saved his bowmen and out into the muddied field of corpses. He steps past his united countrymen; he picks through the arrows that felled so many of the French; he steps around the bloodied puddles where men were drowned.
He stares down the defeated Dauphin as he stands by the fallen Constable. He nods to Montjoy, who holds back the grieving mothers who seek to claw at him for their losses.
And finally he places the boy on a cart and falling in line with the music he humbly offers his thanks to God.
------
“Nice customs curtsy to great kings…”
Shakespeare doesn’t dwell long on the aftermath of Henry’s victory at Agincourt. He moves directly from Pistol’s rock bottom (“To England will I steal, and there I'll steal.”) to the stateliness of the French royal palace. Branagh instead seeks contrast in Doyle’s bombastic dirge. The effect is the same, we shift from the decay of the body politic to its more comfortable shoulders.
In truth there were five years between Agincourt and the signing of the treaty at Troyes and a good many other factors contributed to its signing, including the Dauphin's death, another English campaign, the assassination of the Duke of Burgundy and endless internal strife within France. All conveniently elided by Branagh (Shakespeare gives a nod to it in a cut speech from the Chorus); instead, we are led to assume Henry's victory on the battlefield was a decisive in bringing this about. From the play's standpoint, it is a cursory deal seeing as Charles has very few chips with which to bargain.
Harry gets Harry’s due then. The future is all but secure, but for his ability to woo his new bride. Romance, though, is not his strong suit, as he lays out to Katharine in stumbling prose.
“I love thee, Kate: by which honour IIt is another wonderful scene from Thompson and the couple’s chemistry is sublime. It is a great little taster for how well the two would be bouncing off each other four years down the track as Beatrice and Benedick.
dare not swear thou lovest me; yet my blood begins to
flatter me that thou dost, notwithstanding the poor
and untempering effect of my visage. Now, beshrew
my father's ambition! he was thinking of civil wars
when he got me: therefore was I created with a
stubborn outside, with an aspect of iron, that, when
I come to woo ladies, I fright them. ”
The world is in tune. Henry is on top of it. His legacy is secure.
And mine? Mine is still ongoing. For the record, I’m not a wooer either. Besides, I’ve been there and done that (and will delight you with that tale to the tune of Michel Legrand when I find the strength).
------
“Thus far, with rough and all-unable pen…”
I leave you here, at the end of “The Henriad” (or halfway through it, if you listen to others). As the Chorus mentions as he closes off, there is more you can delve into if you want to. A whole other set of plays, from “Henry VI Part I” through to “Richard III”.
Haven’t seen them? Shakespeare wasn’t above giving away the ending…
***spoilers***
“Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crown'd King***end spoilers***
Of France and England, did this king succeed;
Whose state so many had the managing,
That they lost France and made his England bleed:
Which oft our stage hath shown.”
The BBC has recently filmed the whole thing end to end. Again. Though abridged this time. It is well worth a look, especially if you are looking for a way to stay out of impolite society.
And I guess, I’ll throw in my own self-effacing apology. I hope I haven’t bored you with my asides. I trust they haven’t been too far off theme. I guess if you’ve got down to here they couldn’t have been too off-putting.
Ultimately, I hope I’ve done the film justice. I hope I’ve managed to convey how much of an impact it has had on me.
I’ll be at it again soon. Till then, I bid thee farewell.
“In your fair minds let this acceptance take.”
Henry V is #18 in my Personal 100, a journey back through my hundred most beloved films.
You can track my progress here.
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